


i'll see you with your laughter lines

by sebbykurt



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst out the wazoo, M/M, don't hate me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:11:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebbykurt/pseuds/sebbykurt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ll see you around?”  Isaac voices it like a question, as if asking permission to come back some day, when the scars are mostly gone and the glass has been swept away.</p>
<p>Stiles nods, chokes on a smile.  “Yeah, man, come back when you’re ready.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll see you with your laughter lines

The day Isaac is supposed to leave, the windows shake with the force of the storm outside and the whole thing is so disgustingly cliché that Stiles starts to hate Mother Nature for being such a _bitch_.

Isaac’s bags are packed so neatly that Scott makes multiple jokes about his OCD, all of which are shot down by Lydia when Isaac blushes and turns his head, too embarrassed about his natural tendency to keep things orderly to find any humor in the good-natured jibes.  Allison helps Isaac decide what CD’s to keep and what ones to leave behind with Scott, assuring him that his Rolling Stones collector’s copies will be perfectly safe with his friends.  Danny and Ethan stand quietly in the doorway, offering Isaac their wishes of luck and happiness and all of the same, stereotypical bullshit that Stiles has heard on television and in movies too many times to keep track of.

He sits at the edge of the bed in the guestroom-turned-Isaac’s-room-turned-guestroom-again, watching as his friends shake hands and hug and kiss and he tries not to notice the way Lydia squeezes Isaac’s hand a little harder than usual or the way Scott hugs him like he’s never going to get the chance to do it ever again. 

And before he really has time to process the whole thing, Stiles is alone with Isaac, and his lungs feel like they’re caving in on themselves, which is stupid and impossible, because he’s a perfectly healthy young man who knows the difference between physical and emotional pain.

But _still_.

Isaac is _leaving_.

Is going far, far away. 

And he’s taking a giant ass chunk of Stiles’ heart with him.

Isaac lingers awkwardly by his suitcase, rubbing like he always does at the back of his neck when he’s worried or scared or something in between. 

Stiles takes a deep breath.  Lets it shiver past his lips.

Looking back on it, he can’t say who moves first.  All he knows is that they’re meeting somewhere in the middle, lips smashing like a bruise and fingers twining like the loose strings of Isaac’s sweater. 

Stiles twists his fingers through Isaac’s hair, gasping into the other man’s mouth when Isaac pulls them closer, body quivering against the familiarity of Stiles’ touch.

Stiles is crying before he can help it, tasting salt on Isaac’s lips and feeling the burn at the back of his throat. 

It’s the worst pain he’s ever known, worse even than any beating he’s ever taken.  He thinks stupidly of his mom and Scott, of the way one left and the other almost did, and he can’t let that happen to Isaac; can’t let that happen to the one person who actually _needs_ him.

Not like his dad who needs a son or like Scott who needs a brother.

Like Isaac, who needs an anchor, a savior, a _reason to keep going_.

“Don’t go, Isaac, don’t _go_ ,” he mumbles brokenly, tearing their lips apart to cry like an idiot on Isaac’s shoulder.

He doesn’t know what they are; they just never got the chance to figure it out.  But Stiles _loves_ him, knows down to the very marrow of his bones that no one else will ever stand a chance against the way he feels when Isaac holds his hand under the dinner table or kisses his forehead when he thinks nobody’s watching.

“ _Shh_ ,” Isaac whispers, rubbing circles against the shorter boy’s ribcage.  There are no words, nothing to make it better.

Only the memory of twisted sheets and tangled limbs, broken promises and rushed assurances.

“I can’t be here anymore,” Isaac explains simply, voice teetering at the very edge of falling apart.  “There’s…there’s nothing left, Stiles.  Not anymore.”

Stiles knows this.  He _knows_.

He knows that Isaac’s life is a mess of dirty memories and faded scars and shattered glass, and logically he shouldn’t _want_ to stay.  He should have left a long time ago, really.  Stiles knows that he’s a burden just as much as he is a relief, and Isaac shouldn’t have to put himself through that, he really shouldn’t.

So Stiles doesn’t say anything more, just kisses Isaac with everything he has and tugs anxiously at the hem of Isaac’s shirt.

There are a few mumbled complaints between the moans, hisses of _‘we don’t have time’_ and ‘ _god, Stiles, you’re just making it harder to say goodbye.’_  

But Stiles doesn’t care—will do anything in his power to make Isaac remember him in any way he can.

He maps out Isaac’s flesh with his fingers, retracing the same paths with his lips and tongue.  Working off of memory and sensation, he hits all of Isaac’s nerves and takes pleasure in the way he can work the taller boy apart.  He tugs clumsily at tight denim and kisses inches of newly exposed skin, curling his fingers through the waistband of gray underwear and gritting his teeth to keep from smiling when Isaac shivers. 

With very little skill, because he’s only done this one other time, he pulls Isaac into his mouth, and the way his body catches fire shouldn’t even be possible, especially when he’s not even the one on the receiving end.

But Isaac groans and thrashes and begs and it’s all so disorienting in the best way possible.  He thinks about the fact that other people might still be in the house, but he also thinks that maybe they’ll know somehow.

That maybe they’ve always known, maybe even before he knew himself.

“Please Stiles, please, I-I _need_ …”

Stiles shuts him up with a kiss and asks him a question that ends up being answered with his fingers in Isaac’s mouth and that really shouldn’t be as amazing as it is, because no doubt Isaac is going to feel a little more pain than last time, but Isaac doesn’t care and so neither does Stiles. 

At least, not as much as he would have if they had tomorrow and the day after and the day after and _so on and so on._

“I’ll come back, you know,” Isaac babbles, tugging at Stiles’ hair, and he has no idea that his words are striking like matches against the chords of Stiles’ heart.  “When we’re older and— _ah_ —smarter and all…that…”

Stiles has always loved Isaac’s tendency to ramble during the most inappropriate of circumstances, but now he just wishes he would _shut the hell up_.

So he pushes in and makes Isaac cry out, makes him curse a God he doesn’t even believe in.

He bites his tongue and tastes the bitter tang of blood, slamming his eyes shut because Isaac’s face when he’s happy is too much to bear in light of so much unwavering sadness.

There are kisses that taste like copper and whimpers that sound like prayers, and Stiles locks them up tight in the deepest recesses of his terribly frantic mind, clinging to every sensation like it’s all he has left in the world.

He shouts Isaac’s name and Isaac shouts his in turn, and the stars are blotted out by the way Isaac throws his head back and practically screams _I love you I love you IloveyouIloveyou_ at the ceiling.

Stiles drops his head to Isaac’s chest with a sob, clinging with all the energy he has left to the sweaty, quaking body beneath his own.

“I know, I know, I know--”

“I’ll come back, I will, I promise.  I won’t let you grow old without me--”

And Stiles gets it.  He really, truly does.

People aren’t born in parts.  At least, he never thought so, and even now, with Isaac in his arms, he doesn’t really believe that he can’t _go on_ without him.  Life doesn’t sit still, and it has sure beat the shit out of Isaac in its frantic attempt to keep things moving.  He should leave, disappear, get far away from the life that wrecked him in the first place.

But still, yes, it’s nice to believe that Isaac will come back some day and that they’ll end up happily ever after, even if they’re old and dying when it finally happens.

Stiles cups his cheek, kisses him slowly, tastes him one last time.

In the quick-slow process of two people who don’t want to let go but know that they’re probably better off, they get dressed and press their fingers secretly against their newly forming bruises, hiding watery smiles under their t-shirts.

Stiles walks him downstairs, carrying his suitcase and pointedly ignoring his half-hearted pleas of ‘ _I can do it myself, Stiles._ ’

Everyone is gone, either knowledgeable beforehand or well aware after what they probably heard in the process.

Stiles doesn’t kiss him again, doesn’t beg him to stay.

Fuck, he doesn’t even cry, and isn’t that a miracle?

Isaac slips into his car, his hands tightening around the steering wheel as the radio whistles out the static beat of some love song.  Thunder roars overhead, but the storm is long gone now, leaving behind damp pavement and crooked branches.

Isaac rolls his window down, and Stiles takes a moment to analyze the way his eyes seem to shift with the weather, and the way his curls look after a good fuck, and the way his lips always look like they _need_ to be kissed. 

But, as much as it might hurt to think, Isaac doesn’t belong to him anymore.  Never did, really.

“I’ll see you around?”  Isaac voices it like a question, as if asking permission to come back some day, when the scars are mostly gone and the glass has been swept away.

Stiles nods, chokes on a smile.  “Yeah, man, come back when you’re ready.”

With one last lingering look, Isaac rolls up the window, and before Stiles can stop him, he’s pulling out of Scott’s driveway, and his sad excuse for a car is crossing the double yellow lines of the highway, and Stiles is running without thinking.

Running until his lungs burn and his tears taste like mucus and Isaac is just a memory, now, bittersweet on his fingers and caught like taffy between his teeth.

“Come back,” he whispers, even as he smiles.  “Come back.  Please, _please_ come back.”

But Isaac never turns around.

And maybe that’s a good thing.


End file.
